Parabotanists around county collect specimens for museum collection

Jon Rebman is looking for a few good volunteers to help with the
San Diego Plant Atlas Project. The charismatic curator of the
botany department at the San Diego Natural History Museum pitched
his cause last week to the members of the San Diego chapter of the
California Native Plant Society in Balboa Park.

Rebman is urging the public to participate in the San Diego
Plant Atlas project by volunteering to become parabotanists and
adopt a square on the grid of San Diego County.

The full room of plant enthusiasts was nothing short of
enthralled by Rebman's presentation Tuesday night. An audible gasp
could be heard when colorful slides went up of the pancake-shaped
prickly pear and diamond cholla cactuses or when Rebman described a
new fern —— yet to be named —— that sprouts from outcroppings of
wet granite.

The audience applauded when Rebman noted that more than 70 new
species have already been discovered in the county since the
project began in 2002. And they compared notes and asked questions
long after the slide projector had been turned off and the lights
went back on.

"Jon is one of the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable plant
people you will ever meet," said Mary Ann Brooks-Gonyer, a resident
of Valley Center and a parabotanist for the project.

The goal of the San Diego Plant Atlas Project is to improve the
documentation of the flora of San Diego County by creating a fully
Internet-accessible, databased plant atlas. Modeled on the highly
successful Bird Atlas of San Diego, the Plant Atlas Project is a
program at the San Diego Natural History Museum that trains
volunteers how to collect specimens and submit field data
online.

Volunteer parabotanists adopt a 3-mile-by-3-mile square on the
grid of the county and collect specimens and record certain types
of data from that square. There are about 479 grid squares in San
Diego County, and only about half have been adopted so far. In some
remote squares, Rebman organizes "grid gatherings" —— a day when a
group of parabotanists spread out and collect specimens. Some
squares have many parabotanists to cover the 9-square-mile area,
and some parabotanists, such as Mary Ann Brooks-Gonyer, adopt more
than one.

Brooks-Gonyer is one of more than 300 parabotanists who have
already been trained in the San Diego Plant Atlas Project. She has
adopted two squares in the San Diego Plant Atlas. That means she
regularly hikes just west of her home near the Lawrence Welk Resort
or to a remote area near Bonsall to collect specimens of native and
naturalized plants.

"It is a wonderful way to learn more about plants and nature,"
Brooks-Gonyer said. "I've always hiked, but now I do it with my
buddy who is another volunteer, and we share our wonderment when we
see each new plant."

While Brooks-Gonyer admits she doesn't know all of the names of
the plants that grow in her tiny back yard, the former resident of
Maine says she has made it a lifetime project to learn about the
plants living in the wild in San Diego County. She also volunteers
at the museum, mounting specimens for the collection.